


hang an anchor from the sun

by prettydizzeed



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Developing Relationship, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tea, magnus is an overprotective father, mentions of canonical torture, past abusive relationships, two dorks communicating solely via increasingly subtle body language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 17:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14085591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: “Seelies can’t lie,” Isabelle says, and Meliorn wants to tell Raphael how many times she used his genetics against him.





	hang an anchor from the sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brightclam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightclam/gifts).



> i still haven't finished the second chapter of my other raphael/meliorn fic and yet here this is
> 
> set in a version of events where raphael stays at magnus's for a longer time than depicted in the show to recover from being tortured by aldertree
> 
> title is from "Fire Escape" by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, which is a very raphael/meliorn song

i.

“Seelies can’t lie,” Isabelle says, and Meliorn wants to tell Raphael how many times she used his genetics against him. Not even the stories, just the numbers; _twenty-one_ , he thinks in her direction, feels it scatter through his cells. More often than she said she loved him. He wants to say how proud he had been of his identity, of being this species, before he knew her. He wants to carve so many numbers into the wall. Two hundred and ten: how many times he’s wished his blood existed in any other fraction since she twisted his own body into a weapon, far worse than being the Queen’s soldier has ever been.

He wants to ask if she knows what it felt like to have his heritage carved out of his skin, to feel the leaves lean away from his face as they sensed the scars, to have his very being declare him a traitor to them. If she knows that it hurt less than kissing her again, wrists still stinging from her people’s handcuffs, just because he was too stubborn to appear rattled, too proud to reveal that just because he often has many partners, it doesn’t mean he sees physical contact as casual. He’s not about to say he let her be sacred with him; he won’t give her the power.

He wants to ask her, with Raphael here, with a witness, how often she justified it by telling herself that he was aware of her motives. If she ever considered that this didn’t make it any easier to hear her alternate between calling her time with him a relationship or an interrogation depending on who was around. Calling him a lover or a suspect.

He was probably always both.

It makes him hurt all the way through his fingernails, to have been used so totally, to have been so convenient. He should ask how much time he saved her, getting off while getting information, and are the other Shadowhunters impressed by her efficiency? He should ask how many times he saved her people from ambush. He should scream until her teeth crack. He should do anything other than stand here, smirking, like he can’t be fazed. Like his bones don’t hiss when he gets too close to her skin.

He does none of this, because Raphael speaks.

“Yeah, but they’ll spin the truth until it makes you dizzy.”

Meliorn’s surprised his nose doesn’t start bleeding. He feels like he’s been punched.

“I believe him,” Isabelle says, and Meliorn wants to cut all of his hair off. Wants to have been born a mundane.

Instead, he smiles coolly at Raphael, like that settles it. Like all of the chords ringing through his skull will ever be resolved.

 

ii.

Raphael is pretty sure Meliorn has never set foot in Magnus’s apartment, based on the stiffness of Magnus’s shoulders beneath his designer shirt and the way he keeps glancing at the expensive welcome mat like Meliorn will get—gasp—dirt on it, but here he is, looking like he wants to shift his weight from foot to foot but is forcing himself to stay stoic.

“Isabelle sent me a fire message,” Meliorn says, and Raphael has never heard him be anything but blunt, so he doesn’t know why he expected any pleasantries now. Maybe because Meliorn is holding flowers.

“Are you here on her behalf, then?” Raphael manages to say fairly placidly, although he can’t help crossing his arms.

“Fuck no.” Raphael saw Meliorn fight, once, all those months ago when they were tracking down the serial killer, saw how forceful and controlled his jabs were with the knife, and his voice feels like that, now, sharp but restrained. “I do not know why she thought I would want to speak with her,” he continues. “Well, I have some ideas, but they have more to do with her obliviousness and sense of entitlement than any real logic.” Raphael is pretty sure he hears Magnus snort.

“Then why are you here?” Raphael asks, and stills the tremor in his throat.

“I thought you might want someone who understood.”

“I understand plenty,” Magnus says, sweeping forward and summoning a decorative pot into his hand as he reaches out. “Or have you forgotten your dear Camille?”

Meliorn doesn't flinch, but he does blink a little faster than usual.

He gently transfers the flowers into the new—or old, older than Magnus himself, probably—pot. “I have no problem admitting that my track record is not ideal.” He says it to Magnus, but he's looking at Raphael.

“You understand what it's like to have your own body used against you? To watch yourself break your own covenant and be powerless to stop?” Raphael wasn’t planning to say that, and he’s grateful that Magnus doesn’t so much as blink. His heart hasn't beat in decades, but his chest hurts. The contrast is uncomfortable.

Meliorn swallows. It shouldn’t seem so telling. “I understand what it is like to wake up hating your own blood for the ways it has been used, yes. I do not claim to know much of your religion, but I know what it is like to be rejected by your own holy spaces.” Meliorn's hand doesn't drift towards his cheek, but his index finger lifts half a centimeter, and it's enough for Raphael to know what he means.

Raphael scoffs anyway. “This blood hasn't been my own for years,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “And I hated it long before her.”

Magnus coughs. “I would like to add that, again, I was already able to provide understanding, seeing as I have quite a list of people who only used me for my magic—”

“It's okay,” Raphael interrupts, and gives Magnus a look. Magnus rolls his eyes and holds his hands up like _fine, okay, make your own mistakes_ , backing through the door. Sometime during the conversation he'd sent the flowers into the apartment with a flick of his fingers. Raphael normally would have noticed.

“The tea mugs are clean,” Magnus calls from the apartment, and Raphael looks at Meliorn. He has no breath to hold; his hope has nowhere to go.

Meliorn nods.

 

iii.

The plants on Magnus’s balcony don’t trust him. He can’t say he blames them, really; he knows he still screams of Isabelle and Camille and treason, down to his roots, treachery emanating from him like radiation.

The plants tremble slightly as Raphael walks past, too, and Meliorn wishes that wasn’t comforting. He wants to be alone in this sentencing, despite its loneliness; Raphael doesn’t deserve it, which is why Meliorn brought flowers that don’t mind strange bloods and the dark and caretakers who can’t get their thoughts together enough to water them consistently. Because he knows what it’s like, this past half year, to live isolated from all other life. Because Meliorn's blood is ichor and Raphael's blood belongs to someone else. Because Magnus took one look at his armor two months ago, the first time he knocked on the ornate door, and said, “As much as I would love to strangle Victor Aldertree myself, you’re not getting into my house until you’ve changed,” and Meliorn didn’t need to ask if he meant the outfit or something more.

Camille had thought that there was no point in trying to alter the immortal. “They’ll all just get bored of it eventually, darling,” she had said, slicing a petal off the flowers he had brought her with her fingernails and inspecting it. That was early on, when he had still thought her capable of caring for anything other than herself.

Magnus is different, and Meliorn had known immediately that the chaos of his genetics wouldn’t qualify as a sufficient excuse. Demon and angel, the contrast in his veins, the battle that should have split them all in half—Magnus demanded not merely that Meliorn ignore it but that he make peace with it before he would even consider calling Raphael to the door. It was Meliorn’s seventh time knocking when the door finally opened again; usually, Magnus just ignored him, if he was even home to begin with. It was still the hardest thing he’d ever done. It still felt like his blood was separating inside his body, sometimes, laying on top of itself. Maybe this was why they all said he was polarizing.

But Magnus let him in, this time, and now Meliorn is standing on his balcony, drinking darjeeling. Raphael hasn’t looked at him since they stepped out here, but he taps his foot once every two minutes, and Meliorn finds himself smiling.

 

iv.

Raphael has so many questions, but some twisted advantage prevents him from asking any. It feels too much like being in Aldertree’s chair, with that fucking laser, powerless to refuse.

“I don’t want to use it against you,” he says.

“I trust you not to.” The truth of it hits Raphael in the stomach.

“Yes, but the issue is that I don't need to trust you.” Meliorn breaks eye contact for half a beat, and Raphael adds, “I do, though.” It’s so soft. Meliorn’s weight shifts to his heels.

“I can always refrain from answering,” Meliorn says. “I’m not compelled to speak, only to tell the truth when I do.”

“Only,” Raphael echoes, bitter, and Meliorn—Meliorn laughs.

“Why are you here, then?” Raphael asks. He hadn’t known he could still be this gentle. It aches, like using a muscle for the first time after months of atrophy. _The heart is a muscle, too,_ he thinks, and tilts his chin up to look at the sky, and hopes Meliorn knows what he means.

“Because I really, really want to be,” Meliorn says, because he does.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @basilhallward, come yell about these dorks!


End file.
